Days worth celebrating

“Every day. Every day is a new day, a new beginning, a new shot at life…”

How unremarkable, yet marvellous and precious.

Within every day, there is a beginning followed by an end. An open followed by a close. A sun rise followed by a sun set.

These are the motions that are part of the natural cycle of what it means to experience time, of what it means to be subject to physical reality, of what it means to live.

Without motion, there can be no life.

If time stops and everything stands still, we might as well be cold and immobilised within the earth.

Living things need to move in order to sustain themselves, there is no default state of subsistence. If anything, modern living has granted us the illusion of expecting that which is highly unnatural, to be able to live comfortably whenever we see fit.

Then, when the floods arrive, we exclaim with questions like, ‘Why me?’ or ‘How did this happen? I don’t deserve this!’

As it turns out, chaos is always lurking, and it is this that is the natural state. Comfort and stability are the exceptional.

The snakes often emerge from within the places where we least expect them — within your very own domicile, within your garden, within the people who are closest to you, within your own being.

It is less about eliminating all the possibilities of encountering snakes — this would be very impractical and you would be fighting tooth-and-nail against nature — and instead, more about being at the ready, for when the snakes do emerge out of the chaos.

Perhaps, this is what it means to be resilient, to be strong, to be wise, to be capable, to be trustworthy, to be someone with a real capacity to support others when called upon and to not be taken by surprise when things do not fall in one's favour.

Today is my 27th birthday, and just like all the other days I have had and all of the remaining days I will have left, today is a day that is worth celebrating.

Every day.

This isn’t a part time gig. This isn’t punch the clock and go home for the day. You don’t get weekends off.

No.

Here, there is no such thing as a weekend. This is an every day gig. Every day is a Monday.

And you might not like that. Me? I love it. To me, every day is a beginning, a new day, a new week, a new shot at life. An opportunity to come out of the gate like a man possessed and attack the day without mercy.

Today? I’m taking scalps. I’m putting the pressure on. I’m the aggressor. I’m on the attack.

And of course, I will get tired. I will get beat up, knocked down and drained and I will have some bad days.

But I. Will not. Stop.

- ‘Every day’ by Jocko Willink